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Populär Culture Review
D on’t I owe my own honesty something
better than that? Would I sit down in a
com er rubbin’ my honesty and
whisperin’ to it, ‘There! there! I know
you ain’t no th ie f ? No, suh; not a little
bit! What men say about my nature is
not just merely an outside thing. For the
fact that I let ‘em keep on sayin’ it is a
proof I don’t value my nature enough to
shield it from their slander and give
them their punishment. And that’s being
a poor sort of a jay. (306)
Unlike the east, where a name must be preserved for its own sake, a
w estem man is defined only by his nature and his actions. Names are too
small to define the likes o f the Virginian, Harmonica, or Eastwood’s
various bounty hunters.
Names in fiction, then, are mainly narrative constructs, making
the lack o f a name a construct also. The Man with No Name construct,
however, is more a result o f marketing than cinema in Leone’s case and a
m atter o f clever characterization in W ister’s. It can be said to not exist in
the first place, as they all had names, even if they were just nicknames
given them by other characters or a narrator; such nicknames still served
the same function as the other characters’ “real” names, that o f giving
them a way to refer to each other. Eastwood’s adventurer in A Fistful o f
Dollars was originally called “Joe.” In For a Few Dollars More, he was
called “M onco.” The knowledge that this means for “one-handed” does
little if anything to help establish his identity, although a sharp-eyed
viewer might connect this nickname with the fact that the character does
m ost things with his left hand while keeping his right hand near his gun.
Tuco (Eli W allach) calls Eastwood’s character “Blondie” in The Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly, but we also know him as “The Good.” Once Upon
a Time in the West has, as noted above, at least three nicknames in use
(including, presumably, “Cheyenne”) and the enigmatic man with no
name in High Plains Drifter (Eastwood) receives his name in the film ’s
last moments, but only to link two actual identities: the nameless m an’s
with the murdered sheriffs. In fact, if he had remained a man with no
name, the film ’s major theme o f revenge from beyond the grave would
come to naught. The Virginian had a litany o f nicknames, plus a real
name that the reader need not know. The “Man with No Name,“ then, is